


Fall factor

by argyleam



Category: Leverage
Genre: Comfort Sex, F/M, Nonsexual Bondage, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:49:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argyleam/pseuds/argyleam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot knows that Parker could always get out of it. He also knows that she chooses not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall factor

**Author's Note:**

> Fall factor is the force exerted on a climbing rope when someone falls from a height.
> 
> A thousand thanks to phnelt for beta.

Parker would eat anything sweet, _anything_ , and she would eat all of it. Didn’t matter if it was a passionfruit and white chocolate gallete at a five-thousand-dollars-a-plate Congressional fundraiser, or a bag of slightly-deflated cotton candy bought off a gas station shelf in West Virginia, she ate it with enthusiasm, she ate all of it, and then she looked for more. She was austere and elegant in a backless blue dress at the fundraiser right until she started reaching across the table to take Hardison’s uneaten whipped cream. “Easy, Parker,” Eliot murmured, and she glared at the line of waiters he was in but set her fork down. He stashed like four of the galletes back in the van for her, but he could have just brought her the cotton candy. It would have made the same difference.

She ate his cooking happily enough - mostly, she tended to shove any weird greens off to one side - but he knew full well if he went in her warehouse - which he didn’t, she didn’t invite people in there - it would all be shoplifted cookies shoved under the bed and half-empty bags of Captain Crunch, no bowl. She’d clearly never learned to eat like an adult. She needed damn protein. He tried to get her to come by headquarters more, with the food. She’d eat the glaze off the outside of a short rib, though. She’d eat the outside and leave the inside alone.

\---

That’s Parker. She glances off things. She doesn’t hold still unless she’s being held still. And she doesn’t let much of anyone hold her still. She doesn’t want anything to tie her down.

So Eliot’s not real sure why she’d ask him to. But she does, so he does, and it’s Parker, so it’s. Confusing.

She could get out of it. Parker could _always_ get out of it, given enough time and possibly after chewing through some rope, though sometimes it wouldn’t be real healthy for her shoulders to try. 

She chooses not to. He tightens the last knot down, just enough, just enough so that the pressure is perceptible, and she closes her eyes and _sighs_ , her whole body going soft. She _rests_. The first few times they did this, she kept tense, brow furrowed, like it was something she wanted but didn’t quite want to want, and god does Eliot ever know that feeling.

He doesn’t know if it does anything for her sexually. It would for him, being tied up like this, he knows that much about himself, but he’s never asked her and she’s never told him and he’s fine with that, he’s thoroughly fine with that. Her hair is falling half out of its braid, and her eyes are closed, the line of strain that always runs down her jaw is softened, and her breathing is deep and even. He hunkers down on the corner of the mat, arms folded over his knees, and watches her, and it just leaches out of him, all that tightened-up strain sinks through his body and is gone. It’s just them, in a quiet room, Eliot between Parker and the door so that Parker’s _safe_ here, she’s contained and _safe_ , and everything feels okay in a way that he wants more than he trusts. 

When the timer dings he gets up and his knees creak - he’s getting older, not good for a hitter, plus there’re some scars on his legs that are starting to remind him when the weather changes. She’s still, so peaceful that maybe she’s asleep, and he wouldn’t move her except that keeping Parker still requires more rope than is really good for the circulation, so he kneels by her and puts his hand on her shoulder, just until her eyelids flutter a little, and then he doesn’t lift his hand as he moves it to the first knot.

He came by his knowledge of how to tie a person up the rough way, the real-world way where it’s not a nice thing to do to someone, and it’s not a good memory, and it changes something he doesn’t like to think about too hard, the way Parker stretches and smiles, relaxed like she never is relaxed, and then curls up on her other side like a cat, her head against his knee. He puts his hand in her hair, softly, and after a while he’s so sure that she really is falling asleep that he picks her up and takes her to the couch, and when she frowns and tugs at him he lays down beside her - good thing they’re both small - and lets her nestle into him in a full-body way that he doesn’t think that anyone’s touched either of them in years. 

When they wake up she’ll go back to shying away from people and also noises, she’ll go back to perching on the balls of her feet like she’s about to break into a run, but at least he can do this much for her. It’s private, and no one else ever needs to know about it - Parker doesn’t tell people shit, and neither does he, and it’s just - there, quiet. And he likes that too.

When Moreau happens - when Moreau comes back, and drags back a million things Eliot had been content to never think about again, didn’t really want anyone to know about - the thing that really broke Eliot was the idea that Parker might not trust him ever again, if she knew. She didn’t let anyone touch her, but she let him, and he’d forgotten for a little bit about the other things his hands had done, in his life, and started to act like he deserved it. That was what got to him. The thought of losing that. 

\----  
Much later:

He’s sitting on the ground when he finally tells her the worst thing he ever did. They’re up in the exercise room in Hardison’s pub loft, on the old blue mat. He tells her, and by the time he’s done his face is wet all over, and her face is pale, white-pale, two spots of color on her cheeks. He doesn’t know what to say to her, after that. He doesn’t know how to look at her. 

She steps closer, and closer, and he rises to his knees and she sort of presses his face into her stomach, a weird awkward two-leveled hug, and she rocks him like that, and says “shh,” and he stops in his apology. “Shh,” she says again, and he doesn’t know why that’s when he pushes his face against her and kind of half-desperately gets the tips of his fingers under the corner of her shirt, like if he can just get skin-to-skin it’ll be okay, and when she pulls him closer he scrabbles at her shirt hem, at her waistband, but she’s the one that kicks her pants off and shoves him back and straddles him, and god help him but she’s the one who sinks her hand into his hair and and sinks down on him, rocking their bodies together. It’s not something they’ve ever done and it’s feverish, desperate but not sex-desperate, desperate like he thinks if he can get close enough to her he can stop needing his own sorry skin. She holds onto him almost angrily, she claws her hands on his back, she fucks him in short, sharp movements and she wraps her legs around him and shudders when he comes and then takes his face in both hands and kisses it, clumsy and all over, like she wants to say _I got you_ or like she wants to say _mine_.

-

Naked, she’s long and pale, muscled like a gymnast or a fighter, slim and functional. She has some interesting scarring around her arms where ropes have caught, before, and some really impressive palm calluses. He knew this about her before. He feels like he has more of a right to know it now. She’s his height, and they lay face-to-face on the mat; it should feel uncomfortable, exposed, but nothing could be worse than the exposed that already happened, so he just lets her look at him. 

It’s not a tender look. It’s steely; the finger she runs along his cheekbone is soft but the look that follows it is precise, like she’s taking a log. “We said we’d change together,” she says, finally, hard.

“I did,” he replies. “I am. I got a lot to change.”

After a moment she nods. “Does Hardison know?” she asks.

“I told you first,” Eliot says. “I couldn’t. If it’s too much for you, then I’ll leave. Either way.”

She nods, which is not reassuring, he wants her to jump right to no, Eliot, nothing could ever be bad enough for us to push you away, Eliot, and then he flinches and is suddenly, searingly angry at himself for thinking that. He doesn’t need Parker, of all people, to expiate him. He doesn’t. It was bad enough. He’s living with it. That’s what matters.

He feels a treacherous wash of relief when she wraps her hand around his wrist like she’s not going to let go, though. He holds still and lets her hold him there.


End file.
